


the endless road before me

by JBS_Forever



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: And More Angst, Angst, Hurt Peter, Peter gets kidnapped, There's some torture, Tony to the rescue, but nothing too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 10:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12793104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JBS_Forever/pseuds/JBS_Forever
Summary: They take him in the middle of the night.





	the endless road before me

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me in a dream, the way words sometimes do when they aren't accompanied by any other images because my brain is crazy. (I legit dream of just words sometimes. I know. Super weird.) It's five in the morning, so I'm not entirely awake posting it either. If it disappears, it's because I woke up and read it and changed my mind. 
> 
> Also, this is set after Homecoming, so spoilers.

 

They take him in the middle of the night.

 

There are three of them and they are named for the weather: _Stormy_ and _Lightning_ and _Snow_. At 12:01, right on the dot, they pick the lock to his front door and step inside the apartment. They know all about his heightened senses. Super-hearing, super-sight, super-strength. They are not concerned. They have the only weapon they need.

 

May.

 

Her room is warm and smells like vanilla. She doesn't scream, but it doesn't matter. Peter has heard them at this point and he meets them in the kitchen where they give him an ultimatum: Come with them or they'll kill her right there.

 

It works like a charm.

 

By 12:05, they have Peter Parker sedated in the back of their van.

 

* * *

 

 

When the clock hits 12:08, Tony gets two calls. The first is from Happy, who tells him something has happened. The second is from May, whose call Happy pushes through.

 

“They took him,” she says. “These guys broke into the apartment and they took him.”

 

Tony is wide awake.

 

His first instinct is to track Peter's suit, but Peter is not wearing it, and he doesn't have his phone either, so there's no device for Tony to get a lock on. He sends Happy to pick up May and bring her back to the compound. Her descriptions of Peter's captors are just common enough that they don't help. No significant scars, no deformities, not even an odd haircut. Anyone in the world could have taken him.

 

Tony taps into every security camera in Queens. The captors are one step ahead of them, switching out cars, ditching plates, hiding Peter where he can't be seen. Tony loses them before they even leave the city.

 

Billions of dollars in tech he invented and he can't even find a missing kid.

 

He calls in help. Natasha and Rhodey and Vision. They each take different positions, try to tackle this obstacle from all angles involved. Outside, blue filters into the dark sky. The sun rising, a new day beginning. Peter still gone. Peter still invisible to them.

 

“What do these guys want?” Natasha asks after they trace another trail that goes cold.

 

Tony shakes his head. “I don't know.”

 

He won't stop until he finds out.

 

* * *

 

 

Sixteen miles away, along back roads and winding trails and hills that stretch up toward the heavens, Peter opens his eyes and sees nothing. It takes him a long moment to remember where he is. The thick, heavy smell of dust settling into his nose; the cold, hardwood floor under his socked feet. There is something sweet too, something like trees and leaves and the fresh autumn air not tainted with pollution or stale cigarettes.

 

This is not a warehouse. This is not a building he has ever been in. He knows right away he's not in the city anymore.

 

“Are you awake?” a deep voice asks.

 

Peter doesn't know if the question is directed at him or not. He stays still, holds his breath, tries discreetly to move against whatever is pinning him in place. He should see light, but he doesn't. He should be able to break free from his restraints, but he can't.

 

“I know you are,” the voice continues.

 

Has Peter gone blind? He looks around for the person and can't find them. Then he senses the material on his face – fabric, soft and smooth. He's been blindfolded.

 

“What do you want with me?” he asks.

 

“Simple,” the person – a man – continues. That's right, there had been three of them in his apartment. They'd gotten to May.

 

Panic flutters in his chest. _May_. They'd promised to leave her alone if he went with them. Was she okay? Had they kept their deal?

 

“My name is Stormy,” the man says. “Here's what's gonna happen, Peter Parker. I'm going to break you apart. I'm going to break you and I'm going to put you back together again.”

 

Something moves in the corner. A breeze rolls through the room, hitting Peter's legs. He shifts and pulls against the metal holding his wrists behind him, trapping his hands to the back of what he can only assume is some kind of chair. He can feel it along his spine, can feel his ankles stuck to the legs of it.

 

“It's vibranium,” Stormy says. “You won't get out.”

 

Peter wants desperately to glare at him, but he can't. “So what? You're into torture? You needed to kidnap someone so you could play your little game?”

 

Stormy chuckles. “They said you had a mouth on you. No, Peter Parker, I want to see inside you. I want to see how you do what you do.”

 

“What're … what're you talking about?”

 

“I'm talking about Spider-Man. I'm talking about enhanced abilities and healing factors. Toomes dropped a building on you and you get up and walk away? It's impossible. Or, well, it should be. But not for you.”

 

“You work for Toomes?” Peter asks. It has been months since Toomes was taken to jail. Months since Peter sent his family across the state, lost Liz, gained Tony's trust, turned down his role in the Avengers. He saved Toomes's life that day, but not because he hoped he'd keep his identity a secret. He did it because Toomes was a person. A person with a wife and a child, a person who was trying to keep his life together and refusing to let it swallow him whole.

 

And now Peter has been betrayed.

 

“I do not _work_ for Toomes,” Stormy says. “I am merely aware of him. There were rumors he knew who you were, but he never told anyone. So we took it upon ourselves.”

 

“We?”

 

“Enough talking,” Stormy says. Peter's heart kicks into gear. Around him, something sizzles, crackling like electricity.

 

“There's a war coming,” Stormy says. “And we need soldiers, Peter. We need soldiers like you. Now it's time to figure out how to make them.”

 

Under the blindfold, Peter squeezes his eyes closed.

 

* * *

 

Tony stands in front of a monitor looking at information that does him no good. Voices murmur and swell. He pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He should have found Peter by now. He should be listening to him ramble out a million apologies like it was somehow his own fault he got kidnapped. 

 

Instead Tony is chasing his tail. He's playing through every situation in his brain while Natasha is out in the field, while Vision scans buildings, while Rhodey searches through social media accounts and videos posted around the same time Peter was taken.

 

“We'll find him,” Natasha told him. But that's not the part Tony is worried about.

 

Rain plasters itself against the windows. The lights glow bright inside the compound. What is Tony missing? A face, a name, a motive. How does he find someone who doesn't want to be found?

 

He takes a breath.

 

Back before Peter was a missing kid, back when he was still trying to prove himself to Tony, they'd had a fight that's been resonating with Tony ever since. It wasn't that Peter split a ferry in half and put a bunch of people in danger. It wasn't even that he'd hacked into his suit so he could go out on his own. It was that he stood in front of Tony, on a rooftop near the river, and told him, straight to his face, that he wanted to be like him.

 

As if it made everything better. As if it excused his behavior. As if _anyone_ should _want_ to be like Tony.

 

But now he is. Tony sees it all the time. He sees the same stubbornness, the same drive, and he wonders how much of that is his own influence. Peter following in his footsteps, Peter looking to him for answers, for advice. Peter trying to be like him. He's already better, Tony knows, and he doesn't want to ruin that.

 

Natasha bounds up the stairs. “I've got names,” she says.

 

“It would have been more dramatic to lead with the names,” Tony says. “Who are they?”

 

“Stormy, Lightning, and Snow.”

 

Tony blinks at her. “Are they a traveling band from the 60s? What the hell kind of names are those?”

 

“You're close,” says Natasha. “They're a group of criminals from Brooklyn with a load of illegal tech.”

 

“Illegal _alien_ tech?”

 

“Right on the nose. All bought from the very same people who worked for Adrian Toomes back before the kid put him in jail.”

 

“Fantastic,” Tony says. “FRIDAY, can you pull up facial recognition on the Weather Bros?”

 

FRIDAY says, “On it, boss.”

 

The monitor flashes images in quick progressions. FRIDAY filters between them, eliminates some, saves others. In the corner of the room, May gnaws on her thumbnail, her gaze focused on the screen. Tony wants to tell her the same thing Natasha told him. That they'll find Peter. They'll get him back. But he knows that's not what she's worried about either.

 

It's not just finding Peter that's the problem. It's finding him alive.

 

* * *

 

An endless amount of pain. Scalpels. Needles. “Does this hurt?” Stormy asks. “Can you feel this?” Peter can feel it all. Every cut and break, every injection and drug. They tear him apart to watch how he comes back together. His skin molds into place. His bruises fade. “Do your limbs grow back?" they wonder. And, “Can your heart restart?”

 

He loses chunks of time. The world narrows itself into a hazy mess of darkness that smells faintly of bonfires and smoke, like someone is just outside burning everything down. He dreams; he swings across buildings, he has Thai with May, he watches Star Wars with Ned. There are colors here, colors he's forgotten in the reality of his covered eyes, colors that fill him with peace and ease and comfort. And then he comes back to himself.

 

“Have you ever been shot, Peter?”

 

In the daze around him, he thinks he shakes his head. His mouth forms words that don't make sounds.

 

 _Please_ , he tries to say. _Please_. But they don't stop. They take his blood, once, twice, until his head swims and he dry heaves. They give him water and they go again.

 

He falls back to his dreams. May tells him to hold on. Tony tells him to run.

 

 _Run where?_ He doesn't know where he is, but Tony's voice is strong, commanding.

 

 _Get outside and we'll find you_ , he says. And Peter believes him, because Peter has never had a reason not to.

 

“You want me to give him the sedative?”

 

“No. Let's take a break. Lightning wants to check his blood and I promised I'd bring him back some food.”

 

“Yeah, cool. I'll go with you. Kid's not going anywhere anyway.”

 

Peter hears them leave, hears car doors closing, tires rolling on gravel. He yanks weakly on the shackles. The chair groans under him.

 

 _I can't do it_ , he thinks. _Mr. Stark, I can't do it._

 

Tony will not be deterred. _You can_ , he says. _Peter, you can_.

 

Smoke fills his lungs. Cold air brushes against his cheeks, his arms, his face. He sees the colors again. Orange and red and yellow and green. They are real this time. He is no longer inside the building.

 

 _You have to hide_ , Tony's voice tells him. The trees sway, looming over him. An endless stretch of road sprawls out in front of his eyes. The blindfold is gone. He stumbles forward and almost falls.

 

 _They're going to come back_ , Tony says. _They're going to come back and realize you escaped. You need to hide, kid._

 

Has he escaped? Peter tries to bring his arms forward but they don't budge. He broke the chair he was on, but the bindings around his wrists were snapped together before they were tied off. He is limited, broken,  filled with so many drugs the ground is threatening to give way. If he falls now, he'll never get back up.

 

A leaf lands in his hair. Voices whisper to him, urge him to move, to run. The pavement is warm beneath his feet. It morphs, asphalt becoming twigs, twigs becoming dirt, until he's deep in the woods and he's laying on his back, arms trapped under him, blinking up at a tunnel of branches that wind together.

 

Something wet hits his forehead. It's raining, he realizes with a start, but he's drier than he should be. The trees are covering him, protecting him.

 

“Am I alive?” he asks.

 

There's no one there to answer.

 

* * *

 

Rhodey is the one who finds him. Tony and Vision are inside the barn where Peter was held captive, working on detaining the three men who took him. The facial recognition program had alerted Tony of a place upstate owned by the one called Snow. He'd sent a drone out ahead of them and sure enough it registered Peter's heat signal.

 

But Peter is no longer inside. Stormy tells him the kid was gone when they got back, and Tony is getting ready to threaten to blast them to pieces when Rhodey calls his name.

 

He steps outside and his nose crinkles. Someone had been burning leaves and the remains of it are heavy around the place, making all of them cough. Natasha motions for him.

 

“Over here.”

 

He follows her into the wooded area surrounding the place. Rhodey calls again, sounding urgent, and when they finally see him they figure out why. He is kneeling next to a motionless Peter, who is on his side on the ground. Rhodey has spread his jacket over him and now he's leaning close, a hand resting on his forehead, the other checking his pulse.

 

A high pitched ringing fills Tony's ears. The suit disengages. The Earth slows, stops, and starts again. Peter is not dead, but he doesn't respond to them. Rain makes his hair curl. Natasha pulls a small laser from her toolbelt and cuts through the restraints on his wrists.

 

“Kid?” Tony says, touching his shoulder. “Peter, can you hear me?”

 

There's nothing.

 

“We need to get him help,” Natasha says.

 

Tony has already called for assistance. Peter's fingers twitch. His lips move ever so slightly, no sound escaping. He's not wearing shoes and he's still in his pajamas and he looks so young, so _unbearably_  vulnerable, just lying there in the dirt as they watch over him and make sure he doesn't stop breathing.

 

And all Tony can see is the kid who told him he wants to be like him.

 

Look what's he done.

 

 

 

From forest to compound to medical bay, Peter drifts in and out consciousness. He wakes once in the jet, eyes drooping as soon as they open.

 

“Miss'r … Miss'r … Stark ...” he mumbles.

 

“I'm here, kid,” Tony says. “Just relax.”

 

Practiced hands take Peter away when they land. For hours they run tests. They brace bones, they x-ray body parts, they examine blood samples. Peter's entire system is coursing with a multitude of drugs. Sedatives, stimulates, nerve blockers. “He should be dead,” the doctor tells Tony. No more Peter Parker. No more Spider-Man. And yet here he is.

 

Peter comes to enough to murmur out the story while they stitch him back together. The experiments, the questions. For two days the men ripped him to pieces to figure out how his powers worked. The doctor says, “He said something about a war. About soldiers.”

 

Tony doesn't know what that means. His ears are betraying him again, vibrating, blocking out noises. Two days of torture. Two days of pure, unbelievable pain. How could he let this happen?

 

Time rolls by slowly. They move Peter into a room, hook him up to an IV and a heart monitor. A breathing tube is pushed into his nose and strapped into place. May occupies the space beside his bed. She runs her fingers through his hair, soothes him when the line appears between his eyebrows like she's practiced this very gesture her entire life.

 

Tony watches them from the door. They'll have to let the drugs run their course and that means Peter's suffering will continue a little while longer.

 

But he is alive.

 

“Thank you,” May says softly. “For saving him."

 

Tony can only nod, all the while still thinking the same thought:

 

_How could he let this happen?_

 

* * *

 

Peter remembers feeling like someone threw him. For an instant he's back in Germany and he's swinging over Captain America and stealing his shield. Tony looks pleased, as much as he can be given the situation. Then Peter is walking through the compound and Tony has an arm slung over his shoulders and he's telling Peter he did good, he redeemed himself, he can be an Avenger.

 

He hears Tony laugh.

 

He feels pride well in his stomach.

 

And then, as if he reached the end of a rope, he's yanked back to the ground and he's slamming into himself and he's gasping, choking, his lungs burning.

 

“Easy, kid, easy,” someone says. “Breathe.”

 

Machines beep loudly. The crook of his arm itches. The world is clearer now, brighter, but still foggy around the edges.

 

“Mr. Stark?” he mumbles.

 

Tony leans into his vision. “Yeah. You're safe. You're at HQ.”

 

“What … what happened? Where's May? Is she – is she okay?”

 

“She's fine, kid. She's downstairs getting coffee.”

 

Peter's chest heaves. He feels detached from his body, far away.

 

“You have to breathe," Tony says. "In and out. Try to relax.”

 

_You have to run._

 

_You have to hide._

 

“I – I –”

 

Air rushes through his nasal passages. A trail of liquid runs down his cheek.

 

“Am I alive?” he whispers, and this time there is an answer.

 

“You're alive, Peter,” Tony says. “You were pumped with a lot of drugs though and they're still filtering out. You're gonna feel weird for a bit.”

 

Peter swallows hard and closes his eyes. There's a cast on his leg, splints on his fingers. The ache that should be driving him insane is gone, numbed down by whatever is in his bloodstream. But May is safe. That's all he really needed to know.

 

“You're gonna be just fine, kid," Tony says.

 

Distantly, Peter smells something still burning, smells dust and leaves and trees. A hand grips his shoulder and the words are repeated, softer this time, as an attempt to calm him.

 

Fear tingles down his arms. He has a million questions racing through his sluggish mind and not enough energy to ask them all. So he just holds onto those words. He holds onto them even though he knows he's not actually here. Even though he can feel the hardwood under his feet, can hear the rain hitting the rooftop, can taste the smoke on his tongue. 

 

_You're gonna be just fine._

 

It doesn't matter where he is. Peter believes Tony, because Peter has never had a reason not to.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, honestly, I don't know. If you read this all, props to you. And also thank you.


End file.
